The pot that nearly spoilt a moment in art

By John HuxleySeptember 21 2002

It happened more than half a century ago in a place that no longer exists, but Gwen O'Regan still remembers the day when artist Margaret Preston - not noted for her generosity - gave her a small present.

"Looking back now," she says, "it seems funny." Surreal, even.

It was 1947 and Mrs O'Regan, now 81, was working as a housemaid at the old Hotel Mosman, where Margaret Preston and her husband were long-time residents. "She had taken over the guests' sunroom on the first floor and turned it into her studio."

Usually, the two barely exchanged a word. "Margaret tended to treat staff as personal servants," a contemporary recalled. But when she heard that Gwen was to marry the landlord's nephew, Preston called her back after she had done her room.

"I'd like to give you something," she had said, offering Gwen "a saucepan, or one of those" - four pictures that she had been working on, lined up on the floor. ");document.write("

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"I knew she really wanted me to take one of the pictures," Mrs Regan says. "So I looked along them, and took one. I didn't know anything about art then but it was such a pretty blue colour - though, to be honest, I didn't much like it."

She still doesn't, 55 years on. "Not much," she says, straightening the framed Preston monoprint, a view across the Hawkesbury Ranges, that hangs in her home in Asquith.

Although she did not know Preston well, Mrs O'Regan has valuable recollections for researchers piecing together the life of the elusive artist.

Preston's status as a central figure in Australian modernist art, even as an early feminist, is undisputed. She vociferously promoted a national cultural identity, popularised Aboriginal work and produced some of the most quintessential images of Sydney.

One still life, Waratahs, sold for $474,000 in 1988 and postcards of her woodcut images of Sydney Harbour remain best-sellers in art galleries.

But she was always a slightly enigmatic figure - an inveterate traveller, a nonconformist, and secretive about her birth year and maiden name.

Even an early autobiography, From Eggs to Electrolux, was dismissed as fiction. Some regarded her as "bombastic and aggressive", others as warm and helpful. But most saw her as, in the words of publisher Sydney Ure Smith, "the natural enemy of the dull".

Rose Peel, conservator of works of art on paper at the Art Gallery of NSW, says Preston remains a mystery. "There was a sister, Ethelwynne, but, as far as we know, there are no living relatives of Preston."

Ms Peel and colleague Deborah Edwards have helped to put together an exhibition of Preston's work at Mosman Art Gallery. Apart from introducing her to a new audience, they hope it will jog the memories of residents in an area she lived in, on and off, for almost 40 years.

"Information comes from the most unusual sources, in the most unusual ways," Ms Peel says. She only met Mrs O'Regan because she brought her Preston in to see if it could be restored.

Mrs O'Regan is now an artist herself. She still prefers her own "fluffy landscapes" to Margaret Preston's more challenging art. But she is pleased she didn't choose the saucepan.

The exhibition, Margaret Preston in Mosman, runs until October 13. Ms Peel can be contacted on rosep@ag.nsw.gov.au